ything in
the universe grew perfectly clear to me; I rose on mastering tides of
thought, and all problems lay disposed of at my feet, while delicious
strength and calm floated in my brain and being. Nothing was difficult
for me. But I was getting away from the triangle, and there was John
waiting at the window, and I mustn't say too much, mustn't say too much.
My will reached out and caught the triangle and brought it close, and I
saw it all perfectly clear again.

"What are they all," I said, "the old romances? You take Paris and Helen
and Menelaus. What's that? You take Launcelot and Arthur and Guinevere.
You take Paola and Francesca and her husband, what's-his-name, or
Tristram and Iseult and Mark. Two men, one woman. Triangle and trouble.
Other way around you get Tannhauser and Venus and Elizabeth; two women,
one man; more triangle and more trouble. Yes." And I nodded at him
again. The tide of my thought was pulling me hard away from this to
other important world-problems, but my will held, struggling, and I kept
to it.

"You wait," I told him. "I know what I mean. Trouble is, so hard to
advise him right."

"Advise who right?" inquired John Mayrant.

It helped me wonderfully. My will gripped my floating thoughts and held
them to it. "Friend of mine in trouble; though why he asks me when I'm
not married--I'd be married now, you know, but afraid of only one wife.
Man doesn't love twice; loves thrice, four, six, lots of times; but they
say only one wife. Ought to be two, anyhow. Much easier for man to marry
then."

"Wouldn't it be rather immoral?" John asked.

"Morality is queer thing. Like kaleidoscope. New patterns all the time.
Abraham and wives--perfectly respectable. You take Pharaohs--or kings of
that sort--married own sisters. All right then. Perfectly horrible now,
of course. But you ask men about two wives. They'd say something to be
said for that idea. Only there are the women, you know. They'd never.
But I'm going to tell my friend he's doing wrong. Going to write him
to-night. Where's ink?"

"It won't go to-night," said John. "What are you going to tell him?"

"Going to tell him, since only one wife, wicked not to break his
engagement."

John looked at me very hard, as he stood by the window, leaning on the
sill. But my will was getting all the while a stronger hold, and my
thoughts were less and less inclined to stray to other world-problems;
moreover, below the confusion that still a little re